I had looked over the maps and found the highway that looked like it cut closely to where we wanted to go, the Mati Temple. We took a bus to the edge of town, a dusty strip of car repair shops and dirt parking lots, and began to try to hitch a ride. We stood …
In Zhangye, we were back on the traditional Silk Road, with no more excursions into Tibetan lands. Zhangye is a midsized town located in the center of the Gansu Corridor, the spit of land running between the Qinlian Mountains and the Gobi desert that formed a passageway from inner China to the Taklamakan Desert. We …